This subject is a difficult one and yet it is extremely important. It's not just about war either, but about everyday actions that we commit. War just happens to bring out the worst and sometimes best in humanity. Personally I can't support leaders who take people into war, my conscience doesn't allow that. To me they are hypocrites and morally bankrupt criminals. I don't like real life violence, but I understand the necessity of self-defence within reason. I think only when your life or the life of your loved ones is truly in danger, then it is morally acceptable to use force to do something about it and no negative karma is accumulated.
We all have the potential within us to do the right thing and also the wrong one. Here on Earth we are to make the choice how we choose to live and how we choose to treat our fellow man and that includes everyone and frankly it includes animals and nature too. Do we treat them with respect, kindness and generosity or do we treat them with hostility, hatred, intolerance and so forth. Do we truly cultivate loving kindness in our lives or do we succumb to the lower nature of man which is capable of cruelty and sadistic deeds which would make the devil proud? That's a choice that we all have to make in our lives, every day.
For me as a naturally compassionate person often it's been very hard to witness some things that humanity has been doing and I have been the target of cruelty too in my life. That hasn't hardened my heart, in fact it has been broken, molded and reshaped many times and every time I learn to understand more the necessity of compassion. When we die the only thing that really matters is how much we loved and showed kindness, everything else is secondary.
In my life compassion is not only a choice, I see it as the only way of right kind of living.
Injustice makes my blood boil and when I see people doing awful things my tolerance truly is tested.
We can be angels or demons, it's just a choice. That choice means ultimately everything though.